


Undercurrent

by strawberriez8800



Series: What We Do [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Feelings, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriez8800/pseuds/strawberriez8800
Summary: There was something wickedly intimate about this innocuous picture—with Tommy clad in his nightshirt, sitting at Alfie’s breakfast table—almost like an idea coming to life from the recesses of what might be Alfie’s happiest tale. Good Lord, he was veering dangerously close to melting into a fucking puddle, andthat—that wouldn't do, would it?
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Series: What We Do [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704691
Comments: 6
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read either as a sequel to 'The Madness Within', or independently—with the context that their relationship is newly-established/developing.
> 
> Second part will come in a few days!

Tommy was always gone the morning after.

The extent of _being gone_ , however, seemed to hinge on Tommy’s mood. At times, Alfie would find him sitting in his balcony as he watched the sunrise with the company of Cyril and a cigarette, and—if Alfie was lucky—Tommy might even stay for breakfast; others, he would be gone altogether, leaving the coldness on his side of the bed to permeate throughout Alfie’s house.

Regardless of Tommy’s _moods_ , the fact remained: whenever he was here, more often than not they would fuck, then, they would fall asleep—or at least he suspected Tommy would _try_ to, whilst Alfie himself was knocked out as soon as his head met the pillow—and, in the morning, Alfie would awake alone in bed.

It was as fine an arrangement as any.

This tradition—implicit, though mutual in understanding—was broken one morning when Alfie arose to the sound of Tommy’s slow, rhythmic breathing. His initial thought was a question of whether he was still half-arrested by some fanciful dream; if he was, it would be a wise fucking idea to make good use of it, thus he watched as Tommy slept, feeling all at once like a bloody fool, yet unwilling—and unable—to deny himself something so mundane and _chaste._

It was fucking embarrassing, really, for Alfie—a man who had taunted death and worse in the face, again and again—to be brought to his fucking knees by Thomas Shelby, asleep and unguarded; most and best of all, there existed a vulnerability in Tommy’s expression that surfaced only against his will, and Alfie felt an abrupt surge of possessive pleasure for being privy to this sight.

Enough with this soppy bullshit.

With a stifled groan, Alfie climbed out of bed and made the vague motions of starting the day, careful to remain as quiet as humanly possible until he left the bedroom.

When he entered the kitchen after feeding Cyril, Marjorie was half-way into the preparation of breakfast. Upon his arrival, she cast him a glance over her shoulder before turning back to the stove. “Good morning, sir. You’re up early.”

“Can’t let myself get too fucking predictable now, can I? Wouldn’t want you to get complacent.”

“Predictable you are not, Mr Solomons.” Marjorie cracked a few eggs into the pan. “I suppose I’m cooking for two?”

“Yes, you are,” Alfie said, “for it is a matter of simple courtesy to feed our guest, isn’t it?”

“A guest who is also a very good friend, sir?”

There was a poorly-concealed pointedness in her voice. On a less pleasant day, Alfie might kindly remind her that not only was he paying her enough to keep her opinions to herself, her utter lack of reservation in being employed by a gangster—retired or not—absolutely invalidated any judgements she might have had.

A very pleasant day it was, so he simply said, “Your powers of deduction are out of this fucking world, they are,” and proceeded to leave, though he added, “If Tommy asks, I cooked breakfast this morning, yeah? But he certainly will not, so I expect you, right, to volunteer this tidbit of information.”

“As you wish, Mr Solomons,” Marjorie said with her back towards him. “I’ll even leave a broken eggshell or two. For credibility.”

The _audacity_.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Nonetheless, Alfie’s plan was foiled when he left the kitchen and saw Tommy lingering by the breakfast table, watching the interaction unfold with a lazy smirk.

Tommy took a seat at the table. “I knew you could be a liar in business, Alfie, but domesticity?” he said as he spread the day’s paper before him.

There was something wickedly intimate about this innocuous picture—with Tommy clad in his nightshirt, sitting at Alfie’s breakfast table—almost like an idea coming to life from the recesses of what Alfie might perceive as his happiest tale, which he dared not look at too closely for fear of being lost to it.

 _Again_ , enough with the soppy bullshit; he was veering dangerously close to melting into a fucking puddle, and _that_ —that wouldn’t do, would it?

Alfie sidled into the chair opposite him. “It’s for a wholesome reason, yeah. Quite insulting you don’t see it as such, mate.”

“You don’t need to cook me bacon and eggs for me to want to fuck you.” Tommy said the words with such complete fucking nonchalance that Alfie’s mouth dropped open before he promptly closed it again.

Marjorie entered at this moment to serve breakfast and, with a look of incredulity directed towards Alfie, she left them to their devices.

“As I said, it was for a _wholesome_ cause.” Alfie raised his voice enough for Marjorie’s retreating self to hear. “Not so fucking salacious as you put it, Thomas.”

Tommy plucked a shard of eggshell from his dish and flicked it at Alfie.

“Oi!”

* * *

Since the time Tommy had overheard Alfie’s intended white lie in the matter of cooking breakfast, a slight shift in the air had taken place, as though the incident had served as some sort of elusive breakthrough towards the next stage of their—companionship?—affair?

Regardless, Alfie’s suspicion of this _change_ was cemented on one hazy morning, when Tommy had risen before Alfie and, against all odds, _remained_ in bed beside him, reading a book from Alfie’s collection.

“Good morning.” Tommy’s gaze remained firmly honed on the page.

Must be some bloody riveting story, Alfie mused through the fading fog of sleep. “It really is, isn’t it?” He squinted at Tommy. “But I’m going to ask you a question, Tom, and you’re going to answer with such fucking honesty your mother would be proud—what are you still doing here?”

Tommy turned a page of his book. “Do you not want me around?”

“There you go again, silly boy,” Alfie said. “Of course I do, yeah. I’m simply trying to understand, right—because understand I do not—what the fuck is going on in that Shelby skull of yours.”

Then again, Alfie wasn’t entirely sure if even Thomas himself understood, though that was beside the point.

When Tommy didn’t even grant him the decency of a deflecting response, with false remorse Alfie said, “Oh, I’m sorry. In my state of being half-fucking-asleep I’d forgotten that Tommy Shelby doesn’t talk about feelings, yeah. My deepest apologies.” He watched the corner of Tommy’s mouth twitch ever minutely, and Alfie relented to the smirk that had threatened to surface.

Tommy closed his book and turned to him. “You're a fucking bastard, Alfie.”

“Come on, surely you can do better than name-calling, eh, Tommy? A juvenile behaviour, that. Unbecoming, all right, for a gangster such as yourself.”

“Fine. You want to know what’s on my mind?”

Alfie propped himself up on one elbow, retrieved the book from Tommy’s hands and tossed it aside. “I’m all fucking ears, mate.”

There was but silence as they dared the other to acquiesce or oppose; despite Tommy’s words, his expression—tempered, yet sharp and all too fucking taunting—was one furthest from the intention of _talking_ and edged closer to the realm of wanting to fuck Alfie or get fucked, in the mouth or up the arse and, honestly, Alfie didn’t care what was what as long as his hardening cock would be _released_ from its tension in some way or another—

He gripped the front of Tommy’s shirt and pulled him closer. “What the _fuck_ are you waiting for?”

Their mouths collided roughly, teeth meeting for an instant, and Tommy’s hand was around Alfie’s cock as they kissed each other on the mouth, down the throat, along the collarbone. Alfie licked the strip of hot skin and pulled back to look at Tommy. “You need to work on your methods of communication, mate.” He bit back a small gasp as Tommy tightened his hold around his cock, stroking. “Not that I’m complaining, not at all—Fuck.”

All at once, Tommy’s hand was gone and he lifted Alfie’s chin with the same hand. “Touch yourself.”

“You little shit,” Alfie hissed.

“Touch yourself,” Tommy said again, gaze levelled and cool if not for the blackness that had consumed the entirety of his blue, blue eyes.

The thing was—Alfie could very fucking easily pin him down with his weight, make the fucker finish the job he had started, but he wouldn’t. Not this time. “Fuck you,” he said nonetheless, and brought his hand around his cock.

Tommy watched as Alfie stroked himself, eyes trailing from Alfie’s face, down the length of his body until they rested on his cock. Alfie saw Tommy’s own cock was unabashedly hard and there was a sick sort of pleasure in all this, so Alfie moved in to kiss him again, only to be stopped by Tommy with a palm on Alfie’s chest.

“No touching anyone but yourself.”

“A fucking sadist you are, yeah.”

Tommy remained silent, curling a hand around his own cock, watching Alfie with a stillness that verged on unnerving and it was nothing short of marvelous and sublime and utterly fucking profane.

They brought themselves off to the view of each other; Alfie came first, followed shortly by Tommy. For a moment, they simply lay beside one another, and it might even be romantic if it weren’t for the come on their stomach which had all but smeared across sweaty skin and ruffled sheets.

Marjorie knocked on his door. “Breakfast is ready, Mr Solomons.”

“Fuck off, Marge,” Alfie said loudly, hoping his voice reached her through the door, “please and thank you.”

For a second, there was no response when Marjorie was surely contemplating behind that door, then—to Alfie’s relief—the sound of her receding footsteps confirmed she did, indeed, have the good graces to leave.

What a bloody eventful morning, Alfie thought as he glanced at Tommy, who was now helping himself to a cigarette after cleaning up. It was all perfectly nice, really, except—for all the spendid depravity they had just indulged in, Alfie still wasn’t any closer to knowing what the fuck Tommy was thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

Lightning split the sky in two for an instant, a prelude to the rumbling thunder. It was a bitch of a storm, heavier than any of the recent ones they’ve had.

Sprawled along his armchair, Alfie took a sip of his tea as he glanced out the balcony window. “Good Lord,” he muttered after a bout of lightning struck the beach in alarming proximity. “Did you see that? Fucking impressive that was, yeah,” he said to Tommy, who was sitting on the sofa across him, holding a book in one hand and idly petting Cyril with the other.

Tommy’s gaze shifted from the page to the grey sky. “Your housekeeper chose a terrible day to go to London,” was all he said on the matter.

Setting his pipe alight, Alfie hummed in absentminded agreement. They receded into a period of comfortable silence with the gramophone playing in the background, in which Tommy read and Alfie smoked whilst occasionally watching for ships bloody unfortunate enough to be caught in this weather.

It was all rather domestic and mundane—Alfie thought with a surprising surge of affection—two things he had never expected to associate with Tommy, yet at this moment they did feel to him nothing short of appropriate.

“You have two children and a lovely wife, Tommy,” Alfie said apropos of nothing in particular. “With this storm from the deepest bowels of hell, right, wouldn’t your family wonder if you’ve driven into a fucking ditch and died somewhere?”

“They’re not unacquainted with the prospect of my death.”

Alfie couldn’t help but laugh at that. “That’s bloody cold even for a joke, mate.”

Tommy shrugged, a smirk dawning on his lips. “There’s no one here to judge, is there?”

“No, there isn’t, yeah.”

“Good.”

They drifted into another stretch of quietness. It would be peaceful, unequivocally so, if it weren’t for the raging storm outside, though this—this was nice in its own way.

It was then Alfie noticed the rapt attention Tommy was paying him, the book laying closed in his lap. When their eyes met, without a word Tommy set the novel aside and paced towards him.

Alfie raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”

Lowering to his knees, Tommy lay his hands along Alfie’s legs, fingers curling firmly around his thighs. “As I said, there’s no one here to judge, Alfie.” He slid his palms up slowly, and the little smile on his mouth would look terribly reticent on anyone else, yet on Tommy it was a display of brazenness of the most wanton kind.

“You want to suck my cock right here in my living room, Tom?”

Tommy unfastened the button and zip on Alfie’s pants. “Do you object to that, Mr Solomons?”

“Fuck no,” he said, grinning, “be my guest.”

Tossing aside Alfie’s pants, Tommy said with a smirk, “I won’t be held accountable if we scar poor old Marjorie for life.” He skirted his fingers over Alfie’s stiffening cock, teasing at the idea of a real touch.

“Tommy, I would very much prefer not to think about that right now, yeah,” Alfie said. “So, do me a fucking favour and just—” his brain all but shut off when Tommy took his cock wholly into his mouth.

Gripping Alfie’s left hip, Tommy closed his other hand around the base of his cock. He worked slowly, with a patience that Alfie would be impressed by if he weren’t the one bloody suffering for it, and it was so warm and wet and that _tongue_ Jesus fucking Christ.

Tommy licked the length of his shaft from bottom to top, until his mouth closed around only his tip. He grazed his tongue over the slit, sucked on it playfully and it was all Alfie could do not to thrust into Tommy’s mouth because he _needed_ to be inside it right now God fucking damn it.

Finally releasing Alfie from the torment, Tommy took him in again, deeper and faster this time—thank _fuck_ for that. As Tommy worked him with his mouth and tongue and hands and that bewitching gaze, Alfie was caught between two warring desires of wanting to close his eyes and lose himself in the pleasure, and wanting to watch Tommy suck him all the way to fucking nirvana because, God, the notion of coming just from the sheer intensity of Tommy’s gaze was not entirely preposterous at present—

And the rest was history.

* * *

_Before_ Tommy—as Alfie mentally referred to the commencement of their affair—his days in Margate had passed without fuss; he had been content with the company of himself and perhaps passing ships and seagulls and the occasional book or so. For the first time after years upon years of anarchy, he could finally— _finally_ —rest and he had all but welcomed the repose with open arms.

 _Since_ Tommy, however, this same repose had twisted into a sort of mild, drawn-out affliction during Tommy’s absence, for his companionship, naturally, far surpassed than those of distant ships, squawking birds and—it hurt Alfie a little to admit—even Cyril.

It stood to reason he would be counting down the bloody days until Tommy’s next visit, humiliating as it was—God fucking forbid should he ever acknowledge it aloud—thus when Tommy didn’t show his face at Margate or send a single letter explaining his absence for two weeks in a row, it wouldn’t be entirely false to say Alfie was going a little mad.

Frankly, it would be uncharacteristic of Thomas to put a stop to things without so much as a word; Alfie would like to think, right, their mutual respect borne from their history extended from business to pleasure after all, which meant the most probable reason for his apparent _vanishing-into-thin-air_ was not of his own volition, and _this_ —this was worrying.

That was the thing about the afterlife; even if he _wanted_ to find out what the actual fuck was going on, he couldn’t simply strut back into the real world to do so, could he now? And if it was anything actually worth Alfie knowing about, it wouldn’t be on the news either. Fucking hell.

So he picked up the telephone and dialed.

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me, Ollie,” Alfie began by way of greeting when Ollie answered on the second ring. “Find out any news you can about the Blinders from the last two weeks, right, well, Tommy Shelby in particular. MP by day, cutthroat gangster by night—you remember him, kid?”

Of course Ollie would fucking remember him; the lad had literally pissed his pants over Tommy’s grenade bluff.

Alfie relayed his instructions and hung up the phone. Sighing, he sunk into his chair and closed his eyes.

Let the wait begin.

* * *

Three days later, Alfie heard back from Ollie. It had taken longer than Alfie would like, but he would accept bloody anything at this point; a shootout had taken place between the Blinders and some rival gang that Alfie was now far too removed to recognise, and Tommy—for whatever fucking reason—had been caught in the crossfire.

“Shelby is alive, but doesn’t sound great by the word of it,” Ollie said on the telephone. “We could send someone in to confirm things if you want, boss.”

Alfie ended the call, seeing nothing but red at the absurdity. What the fuck was the point of being MP and building that Shelby throne with his bare fucking hands, if not to be untouchable? Fucking cat that he was, with nine bloody lives yet he still managed to almost lose them all.

* * *

Another week had passed and Alfie had all but accepted the likely truth that Tommy was now buried in a fucking gold-plated coffin somewhere.

Yet there was another tidbit of news that reached Alfie; this time, it was a telegram.

A telegram from Tommy.

 _I’m not dead,_ he had written.

The _stupid_ fuck.

* * *

The next time Tommy visited Margate, it had almost been two months since he had last set foot in Alfie’s house, and for all the word of Tommy having been on the verge of death, he looked awfully impeccable; the fucker had probably waited until he had completely healed before showing his face to Alfie. Vain bastard.

“What the fuck happened to being retired, eh, Thomas?”

Tommy joined him at his side on the balcony, lighting a cigarette. “You should know better than anyone there’s no escaping, Alfie, short of dying,” he said, “which I came close to doing, but not enough.”

“Do you want to die then? Is that it, mate?”

Tommy shrugged. “I don’t care if I do. There’s a difference. You know that.”

“So it doesn’t fucking matter to you that, you know, against all fucking odds, other people might, even if you don’t?” Alfie asked, feeling a dormant, inexplicable anger starting to simmer.

Sighing, Tommy turned to him. “What do you want from me, Alfie?”

“I want you to give a shit, mate,” Alfie said, “and I want _you_ to tell _me_ whatever the fuck that is you’re thinking, because, right, try as I might I can’t bloody figure you out when it’s not _business,_ and _business_ this is not, is it? This is fucking uncharted land and God knows what the hell is ahead of us.”

Tommy took a drag on his cigarette, watching Alfie with antithetical calmness. “All right.”

“What the fuck?”

“All right,” Tommy said again, stubbing out his cigarette. “Alfie Solomons,” he began, blue eyes trained on Alfie’s, “at this precise moment, I’d like you to know I’m fucking _glad_ to be here, at Margate, with you. And I’m also _thrilled_ that you care, because sometimes I can’t tell if you do, with the shit you say. Last of all, I’d like you to know I enjoy your company—very much, and no it’s _not_ just the sex—and I want to keep seeing you.”

Alfie stared at him.

“Well?” Tommy asked. “I’ve fucking laid my heart out and now I get nothing?”

Alfie simply took Tommy into his arms and brought their mouths together. They kissed languidly, with a gentleness that had never surfaced between them until now. When Alfie pulled away, he said with a smirk, “Well, you already know I fucking adore you, mate. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you? Being literally the only other person besides bloody Marge that I see. Fuck.”

“Fair enough.” Tommy traced the scar on Alfie’s cheek with his gaze, then, with his fingers, skirting just barely over the skin.

“The fuck are you looking at?”

“My work of art,” Tommy said, almost smiling.

“Bloody funny way of describing it, if I may say so, mate.”

“How would you call it then?”

Alfie contemplated, all at once regretting his prior words because surely _his_ description for it was far worse. “A second chance,” he said nonetheless, feeling the hint of a flush creeping up his neck.

Tommy snorted. “Soppy bastard.”

“Fuck off.”

As they watched the sunset together, there was but a single thought in Alfie’s mind: he didn’t love, not really, as he suspected his capacity for it had long surpassed its threshold, yet—yet!—if he could, if he could still feel a thing like that, perhaps what he felt for Tommy right now might just come half-way close to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was incredibly fun to write. Sigh, I love these two so much. I hope you have enjoyed this story!


End file.
